Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Saturday December 01, 2007 @01:37PM
from the download-compile-reboot-repeat dept.

BrianAU writes "Firefox 2.0.0.11 has been released, the Release Notes show the only major change as a correction of a compatibility issue with some websites and extensions as discovered in Firefox 2.0.0.10."

Here's how to downgrade without it auto-(re)-updating on you:1.) Get whatever files you need your 2.0.0.10 installation method of choice, then disconnect from the Internet (by whatever means you like).

2.) Once disconnected, install Firefox.

3.) In Firefox, go Tools > Options, go to the "Advanced" section, and click the "Update" tab. You should see an option saying "When updates to Firefox are found: ( ) Ask me what I want to do; (x) Automatically download and install the update". Change that setting t

Maybe it was different in the past when software didn't automatically tell its users to upgrade but now that Firefox reminds you automatically when a new release is out I don't see the reason why Slashdot would put this on the front page... Not only that but this release was pushed out yesterday (or the day before, I can't recall when I picked it up). In addition to even that aside, 2.*.10 was out just several days before that and was a bigger update. If anything, we should have heard about that instead and not this minor fix.

Until the "editors" stop pushing garbage through w/o letting the firehose "fix" stupid submissions, Slashdot will continue to lag other sites in the quality coming through. If you really want to keep it up let the firehose do its job -- if not, let it degrade to the steaming pile that is Digg and be done with it already.

The interesting thing is that it was the fastest ever release of a browser update. John Resig [ejohn.org] gives most of the details: A security patch in Firefox 2.0.0.10 was incorrectly checked in, and introduced a bug which was not caught by the testing process. That was only discovered after the release, so the code was fixed and the whole release process had to start up again. Three days later, the 2.0.0.11 update is available for forty languages and three platforms.

So, it reflects badly on Mozilla's testing efforts, though that is an area where Firefox 3 has made significant improvements with automated testing. It reflects well on their release process, which can push out a critical update in just a few days.

It didn't affect normal images - it broke the drawImage function from the HTML 5 <canvas> element [w3.org] API, which is a fairly new feature and is used relatively rarely but actually quite widely (with ~10 independent bug reports in a couple of days).

Still, I agree it's an unacceptable failure of testing, and I should have said that more strongly. Even the most trivial automated testing of that feature would have caught the problem immediately. Looking at the new tests in Firefox 3, there's still only one which incidentally relies on drawImage. (I have several hundred browser-independent canvas test cases, so I guess I should see if they could be incorporated into Mozilla somehow, to avoid a repeat of this problem in this particular area...)

That's the thing though, the firehose isn't doing its job, part of the problem is that someone needs to be voting up this dreck in the first place. The other is that the editors are not "editing" anything, dupes, inaccuracies, basic failure to use spell-check, you know things like that. There isn't really a way at the moment to label pointless stories, dupes, innacurate articles/summeries that have been shown to work yet. what we need is for editors *and* slashdotters to pay attention to what is being su

Sometimes I just shake my head in bewilderment at the general idiocy of some posts by/. users.

We were actually one of the companies that found the bug shortly after the release of 2.0.0.10 and if you can't see why this is news then I'm really glad you don't work on my dev team.

Just so we're clear on what the bug ACTUALLY was, the bug specifically effected the canvas drawing capability in the browser. It's not something they test for and frankly, given our experience developing for IE, it's not one the

Maybe it was different in the past when software didn't automatically tell its users to upgrade but now that Firefox reminds you automatically when a new release is out I don't see the reason why Slashdot would put this on the front page.

I agree - it doesn't belong here. 2.0.0.10 to 2.0.0.11. That isn't a major revision, it isn't a minor revision, it isn't even a minor minor revision! It's a minor revision of a minor minor revision. Sheesh.

Debian testing is still sitting on 2.0.0.8. Just about the time the 10 days is up for migration to testing from unstable, the package gets changed and/or a new upstream version gets released:# [2007-11-27] Accepted 2.0.0.10-2 in unstable (low) (Eric Dorland)# [2007-11-27] Accepted 2.0.0.10-1 in unstable (low) (Eric Dorland)# [2007-11-24] Accepted 2.0.0.9-2 in unstable (low) (Mike Hommey)# [2007-11-12] Accepted 2.0.0.9-1 in unstable (low) (Eric Dorland)# [2007-11-03] Accepted 2.0.0.6+2.0.0.8-0etch1 in stabl

Every time I install a new Firefox release on any Win2K or XP system (two desktops and one laptop), I get "Windows cannot open (site name)" error dialogs every time I launch Firefox with no other browser windows open. This symptom has returned with every Firefox installation since the pre-1.5 releases. To fix it, I have to manually delete the ddeexec keys that the Firefox installer insists on creating for no good reason.I genuinely don't understand why I'm the only person this ever seems to happen to, bec

I saw that. Someone should file a *new* bug report properly. Making further comments on a bug report that was fixed years ago isn't the correct way to report a new problem, unless it's basically the same problem. It may be the same symptom, but if it's different someone will have to submit a new bug report.

I just search for "FirefoxHTML" (whatever that is) to get into the right areas of the registry, then delete the ddeexec keys from it and the other common suffixes nearby (http, https, ftp). I think the relevant ones are in My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\FirefoxHTML and a few other places, although I don't know which one(s) actually trigger the bug.The link to the Bugzilla page posted above will have better info than this, I'm sure. Needless to say, back up your registry before going aroun

Here [mozillazine.org] is more information from their knowledge base. According to that article it's caused by Adblock+ (0.7.5.2 and lower) and the Google toolbar. It lists two ways to fix it, first by using the File Types dialog and by editing the registry.

Thanks; yeah, that would explain why most users don't have the problem, and why Mozilla doesn't consider it their problem. As long as neither Google nor Mozilla step up and take responsibility for the bug, it's just going to stay broken, I guess.

As I've explained, if you want Mozilla to step up and take responsibility for a bug, the thing to do is report it in Bugzilla. You'll first want to make sure it's a bug in Mozilla code (otherwise your time will be wasted). You may want to discuss it in the Firefox Bugs forum on MozillaZine before writing a bug report.

I'm OK with using regedit, and Firefox is a great browser otherwise. I'd use a teletype and Etch-A-Sketch before IE7.

But when Mozilla leaves a bug like this in place for years at a time, they can't whine too loudly when Microsoft keeps trampling their market share. It makes for a terrible user experience, regardless of who's at fault.

However, from what I remember the registry of 3.1 seemed to consist solely of a mapping between file-types and programs (or at least, that is all that the 3.1 regedit exposed). So it was quite a different beast way back then.

Firefox is a terrific product which I use and wholeheartedly endorse, but I think they have lost sight of their original intentions a bit. I originally started using Phoenix way back when because of the fast, simple interface. People have been so enamored with lots of pretty icons, plug-ins and add-ons, that in many cases, IE is a faster, leaner browser.::shudder:: I like many of the add-on features on more powerful systems, but I pine for a browser that I can run quickly and easily on low-end machines. I've ever once used a Firefox theme. The default one is just fine for me. I've heard rumors that FF3 is headed in that direction, and I just hope that they keep that focus. Maybe they could even have separate installations or installation options for low-end and high-end machines.

I'd just add that both Konqueror and Epiphany seem to be slimmer and faster than Firefox at the moment, especially Epiphany which handles Slashdot noticeably faster. I use Firefox for any web development because of the excellent Web Developer and Firebug plugins, but I use Epiphany for general browsing. The only thing I miss is the level of fine-tuning I can apply to my cookie preferences - Firefox handles that better.

Ever since 2.0.0.8, Firefox is crashing regularly on both my Win2k and XP (both fully patched) boxes. New Firefox releases keep coming fast this year, but do they ever address these stability issues? Is anyone else getting regular (2-3 per week) crashes? Do I need to quit surfing for free porn in the.ru domain on my Win95 box with no firewall? (ok, that last part was actually bs).

Yes, I use Firefox, happy user and all, but how is such a minor update news worth to make it on the title page?Just as a comparison: when OpenSuse 10.2 was released (or was it 10.1) not a single of the many submitted articles was published on Slashdot.

I am sure FF has more users than OpenSuse. However, OpenSuse is among the three most used Linux distros, and in central Europe probably among the top two or one .Also, the comparison with OpenSuse was more an example -- I certainly would find an article about the FF version 3 or even a beta for version 3 apropriate. But a tiny bugfix update like this? How do articles actually make it to the frontpage on Slashdot?

I'd blame the website before Firefox. Can't say about Vonage, but my online banking has been curtailed by the IE 'requirement' which seems to hide the frame(s) with clickable buttons which enable online transactions. I d/l'ed the WebDeveloper add-on or plug-in. Now I can right-click on the borders of hidden frames, select This Frame/Open in new tab and there is the good old page I used to see. The buttons are not "live" however, you must right-click desired function button, choose Copy Location and paste it

A simple bugfix release is definitely !news. If slashdot were to consistently post stories for simple bugfix releases for major software packages these would be 90% of the news! Imagine MS patch Tuesdays.

I've yet to be notified of a single update while running FF as a normal user on linux. Extensions being the exception, since those are user-based (if only there were a way to make THOSE take effect system wide, I'd be much happier setting things up for dad)

It's a race to the bottom between iTunes and Firefox, for which piece of software can aggravate its users by constantly auto-updating.
At least Firefox doesn't make you accept the license agreement every time a patch is installed...

I see some people saying that this isn't news, but I am glad to see Firefox get some attention. Some people may have disabled auto update and forgotten to update for a while. (I personally don't like apps that automatically phone home even with good intentions).This specific release only fixes a canvas regression from the previous one, (Whoops! And I thought I was having a bad day trying to rush out some software) but altogether previous releases fix many security issues and it is nice to see a reminder els

I see some people saying that this isn't news, but I am glad to see Firefox get some attention. Some people may have disabled auto update and forgotten to update for a while. (I personally don't like apps that automatically phone home even with good intentions).

Then you need to pay attention for updates yourself and your point that it should be front page Slashdot news is moot. In addition, I would assume that the vast majority of geek users of Firefox don't turn off auto-updating because then it basically

Well, the thing with this issue apparently is.11 only fixes a bug introduced by a botched patch in.10 which was only released 4 days ago. Odds are, people who don't have auto updates enabled and don't update often probably wouldn't have been running.10 anyway. The story is completely pointless. (though, in my case, Firefox never told me there was an update, and I only noticed last night when I started it up and it installed something, but still.......)

Well, on my G4 Mac Firefox 2.0.0.9 seemed to hit a peak for resource usage, and needed to be restarted every couple of hours if I had my usual six or seven tabs open. Eventually it would slow to a near halt. Slashdot in particular just stopped loading for some reason that I couldn't bothered to figure out.

2.0.0.10 seemed to be better in terms of bring a memory hog, but crashed repeatedly. I suspect that specific to a few sites, but still there hadn't been problems before.

Firefox is suspect on the Mac, in comparison to the stability it achieves on Linux and Windows operating systems. Although I love it, and have it installed, I have moved away from Firefox 2.x over time. I would check out Camino [caminobrowser.org] instead. Almost the same rendering with Gecko, but, rock solid in terms of crashing and such. Optimized versions specific to your processor, along with some useful add-ons (extensions unfortunately don't work with Camino) can be found at PimpMyCamino.com [pimpmycamino.com]. I use the UserAgent ad

Open source projects tend to have somewhat byzantine version numbering schemes, but Firefox really takes the cake. It has four different numbers, out of which only two are used. The second one was a "5" once, but that was completely arbitary, too.

I know the reason for this is supposedly the extension system, but that is not a valid excuse. An internal technical detail should not exposed to users like that, and even so, the reason is not the extension system, but that the version checking for extensions was designed wrong from the start.

Now, can we please have a sane two-part version number for 3.0 and up?

As someone who was bitten by the bug fixed in 2.0.0.11, I think the terse/. description
needs a little backstory.

2.0.0.10 f*cked up a lot of AJAXy web apps, and, frankly,
Mozilla's initial response [mozilla.org]
was less than "customer oriented". The "shoot the messanger" attitude exhibited
in some of those early Bugzilla posts - despite there being numerous random URLs provided to point out the flaw -
is a bit troubling.

As is the fact that Firefox's release process seems to be either lacking basic
tests for std. API's, or is choosing to skip those tests.

And of course, the lack of an easy 1-click "Revert" menu item/button to back down
versions when an auto-updater introduces such a bug further compounds
the impact of these sort of bugs.

Of course, the/. crowd are somehow spinning this serious failure of both
software and processes into proof of Firefox's superiority, due to
the quick turnaround time. However, those of us that were
actually bitten by this - and esp. had customers bitten by this (see the Bugzilla link above)
- are having to rethink the usual practice of recommending FF over IE/Opera/etc.

1) Original report2) 5 comments confirming that it's a problem3) 1 comment indicating which change caused the problem4) 1 comment indicating what should be done to fix the problem5) 1 comment combined with flag changes to make sure there is a regression test in the future6) 1 comment asking an earlier commenter for the URL to the site they said was broken, to
make sure that it actually gets fixed.7) 3 comments that say that it's a problem and where8) A regression test being posted9) The regression test being checked in10) Some bugs being marked duplicate11) The fix being checked in

All that happened over the course of 18 hours. I stopped reading there, since the rest doesn't particularly matter, as far as I can tell.

And when you stopped reading, you should have continued, because there you have "helpful" suggestions like "Owners of high traffic sites should be QAing their sites against our nightlies to ensure bugs don't affect them or they can report them" (uh, huh? Why is it a site owner's responsibility to track Firefox development for regression of introduced bugs?) Seriously? Daily checks of the Firefox nightly build to ensure such basic functionality as canvas.drawImage isn't completely fucked by the developer's i

The commenter in question is not a Mozilla developer. He's not Mozilla Corporation QA. I'm not sure why you're taking "Mozilla" to task for something someone not particularly affiliated with Mozilla said in a comment in the bug database. A bug database in which anyone can create an account and then say things.

I posted this on an earlier post but I thought it more relevant to re-post here as it's fits in nicely with the above comment.

We were actually one of the companies that found the bug shortly after the release of 2.0.0.10 and if you can't see why this is news then I'm really glad you don't work on my dev team.

Just so we're clear on what the bug ACTUALLY was, the bug specifically effected the canvas drawing capability in the browser. It's not something they test for and frankly, given our experience developing for IE, it's not one they test for either (if IE's random and aberrant behavior is any indication, hell MS can't even make a browser that displays content in a compliant manner given the HTML spec).

A number of sites and web applications use this functionality specifically for navigation, and when Firefox was updated to 2.0.0.10 on many client machines automatically, some business critical web applications were seriously effected. Because of this it was a pretty serious issue.

The reason this IS news is because after confirming the bug and determining the extent of the effect on the user base, the Mozilla folks had nightly builds in our hands just hours after a fix was checked in. This got most of the immediately effected back to work within hours.

A number of us then independently verified the fix against our code and then provided rapid feedback to the team so they could issue a release.

This resulted in an astonishingly fast turnaround. I think the Mozilla folks are to be commended for both not resisting requests for a new release, and the speed with which they were able to respond to a bug effecting business critical web applications. If this had been MS we would have spent 2 weeks navigating mindless support bureaucracy and then fought with management excuses as to why a fix just "can't be turned around overnight." We would have then been forced to contact all of our customers and go into long, boring explanations most of them would never have understood... it's all down hill from there.

Why this IS big news: It is a really bright and shining example of why this type of development is succeeding even in a situation where recursion testing fails (and if you think recursion testing can't fail then you just haven't been developing long enough).

The other good thing that came out of this is we now have a mechanism where developers can subscribe to a mailing list alerting then to pending releases.

Not only did Mozilla respond with a technical fix to the bug AND promptly issue a release which addressed the issue, but they were humble enough to recognize there was a process related problem that needed addressing as well; they fixed that too.

why the hell do they use such a retarded versioning scheme? every single 2.x release is going to start 2.0.0.x, and then the next planned release is 3.x, whats the point in the.0.0? one zero i could understand, but having two and NEVER incrementing either is silly

After some upgrade CPU usage has been going through the roof (and staying there) more and more frequently for me. Combined with the memory leaks it's now seriously close to the point where I'll start moving to some other browser. Problem is I don't like any of the alternatives - I use Opera for some things that tends to bring Firefox to it's knees, but I can't stand it's UI for regular usage... I really, really want to be able to stick to Firefox, but not if it means restarting my browser many times a day (

Flashblock is damned nice. I just started using it in response to some unusually-gross ads on Fark. It doesn't require much motivation to install -- just google flashblock and click on the obvious link.

Do not use revision numbers on your software that look like IP addresses. ESPECIALLY please don't use them in the user agent string so that these numbers appear in web log files. Such numbers muck up many things.

By the time you wrote your rant, you could've fixed your regex to not look for IP addresses in the *user agent*.

If you've been using Perl since 1998 you'll probably remember that a number of programmers used to display years by using the "half-assed" method of concatenating '19' with the year value from localtime.

When a counterexample appeared that broke this behaviour (the year 2000), did programmers kick up a fuss and call for a change to the function? Or did they just start using the correct method to achieve their goal?

And, I decided to put it in my knoppix remaster [geocities.com], replacing version 2.0.0.9.Yes, I skipped over 2.0.0.10, since Slashdot did not tell me about it. I did test it for a while [blogspot.com] before I put it in the CD.